Gana-Gana is the first trading station of the Niger Company from the headquarters at Burutu. The river is a-quarter-of-a-mile across. In mid-stream is a small island on which the station has been made. The manager’s house is a medium-size stern-wheeler hauled up on the island, The lower part of the boat is used as a store for bought produce; the upper part remains little altered from when the barque was afloat, the saloon merely modified to the conveniences of living on land.
A screw steamer has also been drawn up, roofed with corrugated iron and is used as living quarters for the black staff. No one else remains on the islet during the night.
In addition there are three corrugated iron sheds for stores and another for trading goods. Produce is brought by natives in canoes from both banks of the river.
This placing of a trading station on an island was of considerable advantage in the old days when a general attack on a European store, firing the building and murdering the occupants was a periodical entertainment of inhabitants up the rivers. The station being surrounded by water which had to be crossed gave the defenders a chance, with the use of rifles, to beat off an assault.
All the trading stations are kept busy from morning to night, so there is little likelihood of anybody in one experiencing monotony; but in former days there was the additional exhilaration of always having in mind the probable need of a sudden run for firearms to keep at bay a howling mob of savages bent on killing and plunder. By comparison, things are quite tame nowadays.
Although the river, broad as it is, gives practically nothing to spare in depth, we spin along in the effort to reach Burutu to-night, but the channel occasionally becomes so shallow that, unless we are to be run aground after all, the engines have to be slowed; for, whilst it is urgent to reach Burutu without stop, as a mail liner leaves Forcados to-morrow morning for England and we have light cargo for her, if we go on a sandbank the whole scheme must be upset and a week’s delay ensue. That means, instead of the goods being directly transhipped, the labour and extra expense of warehousing and handling them three times instead of once. Therefore, notwithstanding the brief twilight is passing and darkness coming on, the engines continue their regular sharp pulsation and the stern-wheels strike the water with their pat-pat-pat sound, and no halt is made as the night settles around, though we are still some 20 miles from Burutu. Fortunately, the moon is clear. Nasaru looks unflinchingly ahead. He has been doing so for 12 hours, yet he shows no sign of weariness and appears as visually alert as he was at the start.
Should anything untoward occur to delay us, it is the skipper who will be blamed. He is expected to be in time for whatever is to be transferred from his boat to the homeward-bound liner. If he does not maintain that time-table he must give a good reason why; it must be a very good reason. Still worse is it for his reputation if he runs aground. That may be no fault of his; still, he is judged from results. There is nothing like being careful; an excess of that quality, however, means that dovetailed arrangements and schedules are put out of gear. Whatever difficulties or obstacles come in the path of a skipper of a large stern-wheeler on the Niger—and many do—in thinking how to overcome any one of them he can always murmur truthfully, as did Desdemona, “I do perceive here a divided duty.”
Steadily, yet with unrelaxed caution, paddling, the miles between us and our goal are reduced one by one, until, at nearly 10 o’clock, in the distance there is a cluster of white specks, too bright to be stars. As we move onwards it becomes plain they are the electric lights on the wharf at Burutu. Half-an-hour more and we are up to them and at anchor.
It seems we have suddenly sailed into a new world, or, rather, into the old, strenuous, restless world again. The long rows of large sheds, the big arc lamps and the smaller ones together throwing a glare half-way across the river, and the wide-funnel ocean ships and others of lesser degree clustered, all tell you are at a large shipping port planted in West Africa.
Nearly everybody ashore has gone to bed, but Captain Stephenson promptly reports his arrival to Mr Price, the Burutu Agent of the Niger Company, and word is brought back from him that the Mungo Park is to leave at 6 a.m. for Forcados, so that anybody who desires to land at Burutu must do so before that hour next morning.